My lovely G has been away on a course for her work over the last couple of days leaving me and Jess alone in the house. While it's not unusual for us to be alone during the day, it's highly unusual for us to be alone overnight too. Jess' reaction has been very amusing. After G failed to come home on the first night Jess clearly believed the fault to be mine and has studiously completely ignored me since then.
You know what rejection feels like when you're being ignored by a cat!
Today, after yet another snowfall of {for this part of the world} almost biblical proportions, I took the camera out to try and get a photo of Traprain Law in the snow. Traprain is one of the key landmarks of East Lothian and when I see it on the road back from Edinburgh or further afield I always feel like I'm almost home. At least I'll be home in twenty minutes I should say. Before I left I took some photos of the birds feeding and stuff by the house {again}.
Frozen pasta.......yum!
One of the apples left on the tree for winter food for the birds
Traprain Law in the distance
A local road after a weeks snow.
And a week of the local authority getting to grips with it.
Plough ridges in the snow look like wave patterns.
I had to go down the hill to the farm to turn the car.
The outside temp plummeted from a balmy -5C to -12C in the shade.
This week sees the start of the prosecution of three sorry two - one's already owned up to a guilty plea - ex-Honourable Members Of Parliament for expenses fraud. {I commented on this earlier in the year here and here if you want more info} They tried to use the defence of 'Parliamentary Privilege' to prevent prosecution. {The statute of Parliamentary Privilege dates back to around 1650 and was designed to allow freedom of speech within parliament and to protect members from coercion, particularly by the king - until they subtly resolved that little problem by decapitating him. In this modern instance the MP's in question stated that any issue relating to work within parliament could only be investigated and dealt with by parliament itself in the hope of avoiding criminal charges. They were wrong} Hopefully they will get both justice and fairness and meet the same end as King Charles - not the 'King' King Charles, I mean the dog King Charles - and have their nuts either removed completely or at least certainly given a severe judicial squeezing.
Last week also saw oor ain Scottish MP's decide overwhelmingly not to pass Margo MacDonald's end of life assistance bill for further consideration, {more reflections on that issue here} which leaves anyone assisting anyone terminally ill to deliberately end their life able to be charged with homicide under Scots law. As I said in my last post regarding this, no matter how you feel about suicide it's not against the law in Scotland, so how can it be an offence to help someone not to commit an offence themselves.
The piece that first got me into Vangelis' music.
One for a dark room, headphones and high volume.
Hullo ma wee blog,
The window of the bedroom is closed for the first time in as long as I can remember. Normally the only time it's shut is when we are away from home and the last time I can think it was possibly closed was almost a year ago, during the worst of last Winter's nightmare weather. Tonight as I lie in bed I'm grateful that it's not open. The temperature in the room is freezing in these few hours of the night before the central heating system kicks in to heat the house for the start of the day. {our heating system is LPG as we live in a small village not connected to mains gas which is a lot cheaper. This year our gas has gone up by crippling 55p a litre and - with only one supplier - they have us over a barrel.} The overnight temperature is forecast to get down to -6C but even that has failed to stop snow falling, except now it comes down as hail and it's this that has wakened me.
I lie for a while and listen to the sound of the hail shattering itself against the window in the howling wind. I would get up and have a look but I'm not brave enough to face it this morning, so I lie in bed and relish the warmth seeping across from my Lovely G close beside me. I run a hand across her hip and waist and slowly on up the slope of her ribcage to her shoulder, a soft but deliberate movement which elicits an intake of breath and a slow stretch from somewhere deep in her slumber. I smile and continue the movement, now gently using my fingernails to further mess with her dreams as my hand follows the dip of her spine back down to rest eventually at her hip again. A few moments later, as I drop off back to sleep, my fingers are nudged by a restless Jess who is lying nestled in the curl of the other side of G's body. I ignore her in the hope that she'll also drop back off to sleep but she has other plans and her nose, warm and wet, again nudges my fingers, followed a moment later by the tap of her paw. It too is warm and soft but insistent as it taps me once, twice and then a third time. I push my arm across G and search Jess' furry body with a gentle hand until I can orientate her in my mind and, having found responsive ears and neck, I begin to knead her shoulders and neck as purrs begin to pour from a satisfied cat. We remain connected by the lazy movements of my hand until we both fall asleep, the three of us together now under the duvet, safe from the wind and the brittle sound of hail on glass.
Some time later I wake again. The house is silent, not even the occasional tick from a radiator beginning to heat, so I know it's early. I lie for a while listening and then, as I often do, I get up to avoid waking the Lovely G with my restlessness and, stopping to pull on trousers, tee-shirt and jumper, I head downstairs to kitchen, coffee and computer. The clock on the oven says its 4.15am as I head to the table, cup in hand and press the power button on the laptop. As I've come down the heating has just come on and the hum of the boiler tells me the house will soon be warming up for the day. Waiting for the sign-in screen coming to life I press the light-switch on the wall to the left of my seat. The light outside over the patio comes on and I pull the vertical blinds slightly to the side to see what's been happening during the night. Outside snow - and proper snow this time - is coming down thick and fast in huge flakes, tumbling and whirling in eddies by the nearby walls. It looks like another three or four inches have come down and this will add to the four or five inches already there. The laptop screen turns blue and I sign in and head for my blog's dashboard to check if anyone has posted on the blogs I follow and to check if any comments have been left on 'Crivens Jings...'
After a while I again take a peek out at the patio and see snow still falling as thick as before. Impetuously I reach for a fleece and pull on my boots that are lying at the kitchen door. "What on earth am I doing?" crosses my mind as I step out into the snow and walk round the side of the house and head down the drive to where the streetlights are showing the end of the drive lies. The snow underfoot is soft and fresh and even in the darkness the snow gives off a kind of light despite the stuff coming down all around. I hear the gentle crump of snow compressing with each step and feel that I'm not actually walking on the drive but somewhere vaguely above it, not quite in control of my balance as I slip into holes left by previous and now invisible footsteps. I make a mental note to keep an eye out for the depressions ahead, those puddles normally that are a trap waiting for me hidden as they are under the snowdrift in front of me. I give the area a careful and wide berth and head on down the slight slope to the road. I step out of the drive and again find myself taking extra care at hidden ruts of frozen snow at the side of the road as I step out into the middle of the completely empty street. The silence is........ Well, it's complete, absolute, perfect. It's stunning! The sound of silence is....... stunning!
I stand alone in the middle of the street and no matter which way I turn I hear nothing. I resist a childlike giggle and the urge to shout something into the snow falling round me. It is only about 5.00 after all. I can't hear a thing. Even the sound that is a quiet but almost constant here - the A1 main East coast London to Edinburgh road noise - is absent. Usually you can hear lorries on the hill past the village at any time, day or night.
Nothing.......
I'm in a silence of snow.
I look back toward the house but I can't see it. I can probably see about 30 or 40 feet but not much more. I look at my fleece in the light from the streetlamp. It's covered in snow and my arms are completely white. If I stay out too long I'll be the best snowman for miles around. But the feeling is utterly beguiling. Soon though I begin to feel the cold seeping through the fleece and jumper and I know it's time to head back inside. I've not been out long but it's been enough and I turn to retrace my steps up the drive and around the house to the patio door at the side of the kitchen. I step inside having kicked the snow off my boots and I shake the snow off the fleece back out through the open door before closing it on the snowflakes that seem keen to follow me inside.
Time for coffee I think. But, as I sit down a few minutes later with the warm cup in my hand I can't stop the silly grin on my face.
That was braw!!!
Now I can wait for day to slip in through the night and the careful but exciting journey through the snow to Dunbar and my Lovely G's morning train.
Blogging and the internet is about making us connected, right?
This video is aimed at reaching someone that someone else loves just using the power of the connections the internet makes. It could be subtle yet shameless self promotion, or so the cynical side of me feels, but part of me, the romantic or the bit that just wants to believe that life always wins through, wants it to be true for purer reasons. Whatever the ultimate truth is, I want to pass it on in the hope that all or some of you will too.
The creator of the video, Walter May says;
"After my girlfriend moved away for graduate school, I wanted to create something different to express my feelings for her. I secretly created a song and video with my friends the Daylights in hopes that it would be passed around and get to her organically. WITH YOUR HELP, we can meet this goal and it can stand as a symbol of what we can do as an digital social community. This is dedicated to anyone who is separated from people they love."
Whoever you are sweetheart and however long it takes, I hope this gets to you.
Well, the snow is continuing to fall, our friend's flights to The Canary Islands have been cancelled and it may be several days before they can get an alternative, all schools are closed, there are no trains running on the East Coast line today and the main A1 from here to Edinburgh is blocked. So our friends are therefore trapped in Edinburgh for who knows how long.
All across Scotland it seems that chaos is King.
The impeccable 'Calvin and Hobbes'
The Lovely G and I have an extra day together and the house is warm. We renewed our supplies of wild bird food yesterday so the local bird population that has come to rely on us is being well catered for and have been entertaining us with their antics this morning. Nothing else for it but to make the most of the day. A spot of peaceful and perhaps reflective soup making is on the agenda for this afternoon.
I found this on You Tube this morning. It's appropriate for the weather.
I'm sitting at the kitchen table as usual and it's late on Saturday night. My Lovely G left me hours ago and is now fast asleep and snug in bed while I am slowly getting to the stage of cold between the shoulder blades that means that I am far too cold for comfort and also means that when I do eventually go to bed, that I'd better stay away from that aforementioned warm and snug flesh that will be lying temptingly beside me otherwise instant and severe retribution will descend upon my person.
Strange how several things go wrong at the same time. Although this week I, at last, got my car back from the repairers with a shiny new front bumper and skirt { they valeted the whole car so it looks a lot better than when it went in.} back home at the house though it seems like if anything could go wrong, it would this week. Firstly our built in microwave oven packed in, then the proper oven underneath and the next day our dishwasher - my 'beloved' dishwasher - died a lingering death. You can still hear it wheezing and trying to turn over but you know it's a hopeless case, it just doesn't know it's gleamed it's last load. Thankfully all are covered by insurance protection for repair so we had an engineer turn up to pronounce on our misbehaving 'white goods' {which is an odd thing to call them as most of them are silver}. A talented man, he resurrected the dishwasher, at least long enough to do one final load and for him to make a dignified exit, identified the malaise affecting the fan oven and ordered a replacement element and gave the microwave its last rites. Then our little phone system packed in so that only one of the three phones was working. Of course the one that was left working was the one that was furthest away from you any time it rang.
From upstairs.
Last night snow arrived. Although the East coast has been hit by widespread snow over the last few days, our wee corner avoided it and although there had been the odd flurry, it came to nothing. I knew as I watched the news reports of cars skittering and slewing down wintry roads that I shouldn't be smug, just grateful, but it's been hard - with a newly repaired front end - not to have been over pleased that others were suffering and not me. But last night the snow that had been promised all week finally came and the roads, untouched by any snow ploughs or gritters, have quickly become challenging. I took the lovely G to Dunbar station this morning for her train and hoped beyond hope for a thaw as we were planning to go through to Glasgow later in the afternoon for a concert, but several snowy hours later I decided that it was a daft notion to think of going so far in weather like this. I did however go to pick up the Lovely G from her Edinburgh office so we could instead go looking for a new microwave.
It was a complete white out as I left to pick her up, snow whipping horizontally across the windscreen or doing that maddening, demented straight on frontal attack on your vision that can make you feel disorientated. Within half a mile I was seriously thinking of calling ahead to advise that maybe she should just get on the first train to meet me in Dunbar and we go home and have the rest of the day in front of a roaring fire. The phone rang - my Lovely G does like to check I'm on schedule - and she listened without much sympathy as I explained in worried tones about how bad the road was, how little could be seen outside the window in front of my face. "Well it's perfectly OK here. The sky's blue and there's no snow anywhere!" came back at me with mildly disbelieving tones. Heartened by such encouragement I drove on for ten minutes in the same all consuming blizzard until suddenly and quite without warning, I emerged into a blinding white landscape under a beautiful sky, pale blue and lilac in the bright sun. East Lothian has a beautiful and dramatic landscape under ordinary circumstances, with its real contrasts of rolling farmland studded with the rocky outcrops of the volcanic plugs of Traprain and North Berwick Law's and just offshore, The Bass Rock, but coming from a literal snowstorm into a Winter wonderland, it was doubly so.
Absolutely breathtaking.
By the time I had passed Haddington the weather was all behind me and the road, although still only one lane of dual carriageway was relatively clear, I had a clear run into Edinburgh ahead. Despite all the amazing scenery around I was still anxious about the return journey, even more so as I looked at the huge black cloud behind me in my rear view mirror that showed what I had just come from. I knew I wasn't going to be in the frame of mind to concentrate on doing any shopping.
And I was right. But, that's a tale for another post, one of my ranty, grumping and curmudgeonly howls at the moon.
Looking back to the house.
Today although the snow is about five inches deep in the drive and drifts up to about a foot or so here and there, I'm quite mellow. That won't last though as I have a long standing arrangement today to take friends to the airport for a Winter holiday flight to sunnier climes. I can feel the apprehension rise even as I write this as the forecast is for more heavy snow today and having driven yesterday I know that despite claims of plenty of road salt in depots, the financial crises means that a minimum of work has been done on gritting the roads and the drive will be on a potential skating rink, so I'm bracing myself for a bum clenching couple of hours driving there and back.
